Alberta nurses gave vaccine to friends rather than see it destroyed

Witness says rules on inoculation varied by the hour

Several nurses told Alberta’s queue-jumping inquiry Thursday that they saw nothing wrong with what they were doing during that hectic time in the fall of 2009. And there was no policy against it.

Photograph by: Jeff McIntosh
, THE CANADIAN PRESS

CALGARY — As Albertans were turned away from shuttered H1N1 immunization clinics in the face of a vaccine shortage, public health nurses in Edmonton provided after-hours shots to friends and acquaintances with doses they feared would otherwise go to waste, an inquiry heard.

While much of the public uproar over preferential access to the 2009 pandemic vaccine has focused on the special clinic set up for the Calgary Flames and their families, on Thursday, Alberta’s health queue-jumping inquiry explored several cases involving Edmonton nurses.

Retired justice John Vertes, the inquiry’s commissioner, heard tales that some nurses working the busy public clinics gave the shots to their friends and family members during breaks on their shifts.

And when the clinics shut abruptly on Oct. 31, 2009, amid concerns of a national shortage, one nurse took home leftover mixed doses to give to her daughter’s friends.

The H1N1 vaccine had a 24-hour shelf life after it had been “reconstituted,” or mixed.

Another public health nurse, Susan Smith, testified she returned Nov. 1 to a locked clinic on her day off, and administered the excess reconstituted vaccine to 15 people, including eight youths.

She said she can’t recall who the people were, and that they were likely acquaintances of the clinic’s staff working that day.

Asked by inquiry counsel Ellen Embury whether she was concerned her actions were “in any way unfair” to people who’d waited in massive queues at the public clinics only to be sent away when the immunization hubs shut down, Smith stood by her actions.

“We were in a crisis, we were in an emergency situation. We had a very limited resources that we did not want to go to waste,” Smith said.

Witnesses Thursday testified that there were no specific policies in place banning nurses from vaccinating family or making use of leftover doses.

That later changed.

The inquiry heard about a Jan. 26, 2010 memo circulated to public health staff instructing them that family members weren’t to get preferential treatment when it came to immunizations.

“It was felt nurses and staff should not benefit from their employment situation and everyone should access vaccine in the same way,” said the note’s author, Linda Duffley, now Alberta Health Services director of public health for Edmonton zone.

Asked why the note hadn’t been sent out in October at the height of the crisis, Duffley said she hadn’t considered at the time that preferential immunization would be an issue.

“We were working with multiple challenges on multiple days, (with) hour-by-hour changes,” she said.

“It was something that didn’t enter our mind as an issue.”

Another nurse, operations manager at Edmonton’s Northgate clinic Judy Brosseau, gave evidence that when her centre shut down Oct. 31 with extra, unused doses, she was “troubled” they’d simply get tossed, and took one vial home to administer to her daughter’s friends.

She said she considered it like a home visit, but said she wouldn’t do it again, considering the updated policy.

Nurse manager Christine Westerlund said she was “generally” aware of reports of nurses vaccinating family members during breaks at the mass clinics. But she wasn’t concerned, as they didn’t seem to be breaking any rules.

Vertes asked why, the day the clinics shut down, nurses didn’t simply use up the supply on people who’d lined up instead of boxing up the doses.

Westerlund said the day was chaotic, with orders changing by the hour, and it “would not have been a safe environment” to reopen the lines after people had already been turned away earlier in the day.

While Friday was supposed to be the final day of witness testimony at the Health Services Preferential Access Inquiry, the probe’s legal team says new cases of queue-jumping concerns that have come up in the past few weeks mean that more hearing days must be scheduled.

As many as seven extra hearing days are likely needed, said Embury, noting they could be scheduled for mid-February.

“From the day we started hearings, we have had people reporting instances of queue-jumping on the (inquiry) website,” she said, pointing to the Edmonton H1N1 cases and allegations of systematic queue-jumping at Calgary’s colon cancer screening clinic the inquiry heard earlier this week as examples of cases that only emerged in December.

“Every day we are getting more allegations and all of them deserve proper investigation.”

Vertes has been directed by the province to provide a report on the inquiry by April 30.

The inquiry’s executive director, Sheila-Marie Cook, said Thursday Vertes has not yet requested an extension on that deadline from the province.

“We continue to evaluate this deadline in relation to the ever-increasing number of witnesses who are being scheduled,” she wrote in an e-mail.

“The Commissioner would make the decision should an extension be required to meet the terms of the mandate he has been given. Such a request would be directed to the Minister and the Order in Council would be amended to reflect any additional time.”

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